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Tragedy or Comedy?
Man is a living guitar on which a fervent hand transforms the vibration of strings into melodies... tragic or comic? Man is a living guitar by which Good and Evil have revealed tragedies or comedies of their own. Man is a living guitar, by which God, in long, never-ending melodies, has expressed the majesty of His... tragedy or comedy? Who knows...? Ding, dang, dong... are the sounds of the guitar, or rather of the heart, which create melodies - perhaps sad, perhaps bitter, as acrid as our world (Earth) on the tip of the tongue of the Cosmos. Ding, dang, dong... ding, dang, dong. It is perhaps pleasure, perhaps a friendly smile, a wild rejoicing like the grinning of a madman at the crossroads. Perhaps. Who knows?... The ardent hand plucks the strings of the guitar, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Lustful fingernails wound the guitar, no, the breast, the heart... blood drips and flows... the string breaks... the melody dies - and so does man! An individual, of an unsavoury sort, revealed his pain at the corpse of what was once man, while in the corner of his eye a crocodile tear glistened, reflecting the tragedy of the corpse. Another individual, of a better sort, laughed, guffawed so much that the features of his face became distorted and turned ugly. It was the mirth of a man in the face of comic fatality. Through man, Good, Evil, and God emerged from the dark into the light, and through man, they will recede into the darkness once again. Behind them the vaguest of impressions will subsist, planted in the lap of life, and will plunge into complete oblivion. But for the moment, all man is a stage on which Good, Evil, and God perform dramas of hatred and love, of contempt and affection, of desire and apathy, of adoration and condemnation... And while they are playing out their martial dramas of artistic refinement and theatrical majesty, they jab the sharp knives and poison arrows and pour molten lead into man, emitting cries of victory. When the battle is won, the tragedy concludes with a majestic Te Deum, with a Te Deum Laudamus full of perfidious sincerity. The Te Deum is the key to a comic opera called Peace: tragedy, comedy, and so it goes on and on. Where tragedy is born, comedy is present as a guest of honour - a godfather - and conversely, where comedy is born, tragedy attends as the guest of honour and godfather. They call it a tragicomedy, or is it a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy? Do you understand? If not, remember: "Laugh, Pagliaccio, at your shattered love," and you shall understand. "Laugh, Pagliaccio, at your shattered love!" The figure of Pagliaccio was created by the Absurd to entertain the shadows of the night, the light of day, and the creatures of the other world. All of them are waiting for him to laugh, and this will give rise to a universal laugh, a burst of laughter, a roar which will cause the Cosmos with all its planets and spheres to shudder. And all the time, man's heart is breaking. His heart is breaking because his life depends on that laugh, depends on the mercy of the merciless planets, depends on the hearts of the heartless spheres, depends on the Absurd which created him. It is a difficult and far from comforting condition for the fragile reed which is man in the face of the Cosmos. The tragedy of man is to be found in his illusion of grandeur, and the comedy is in his sense of insignificance. Thus: "Laugh, Pagliaccio, at your shattered love!" It is a tragicomedy!... or, the tale of human feelings, whichever you prefer. Category:Prose Category:Albanian Prose